The Bible in 3D

Seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls. Are there 21 separate judgments in Revelation, or seven judgments told three times? In Part 3, Andrew turns from how we read Revelation to the shape of the narrative itself.The cycle of threes. Semitic writers often say the same thing three times, adding or stripping away detail with each pass. In Job, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar make their case in three rounds, each shorter and weaker until Zophar doesn't speak at all, showing that their argument collapses. Peter's vision of the sheet comes three times before he goes to the house of Cornelius. Jesus says "love your enemies" three ways in Luke 6.Seals, trumpets, and bowls. Read this way, the three sets of judgments are the same seven seen from different angles, growing worse each time: a fourth of the earth, then a third, then "It is done." That's why the mountains and islands can flee more than once, and why the battle at Armageddon in chapter 16 and the rider on the white horse in chapter 19 may be one battle told twice.The interludes. Between the judgments come words of encouragement. When the mighty hide in caves asking "who can stand?", chapter 7 answers with the 144,000 and a great multitude from every nation. Chapters 10 and 11 bring the little scroll and the two witnesses, raised after three and a half days. Andrew connects the seven-sealed scroll of chapter 5 to the book Daniel was told to seal until the end.The spiritual battle. Chapters 12–13 show the dragon, the beast of the sea, and the beast of the land, and the mark of the beast. No one knows for certain what 666 means, but the mark can only be taken willingly, and the angels of chapter 14 warn: don't take it.Like Daniel's visions, Revelation was written to give hope. Terrible times are coming, but God's people will come out on the other side.Part 3 of a four-episode series on Revelation.—The Bible in 3D is a Christ-centered Bible teaching podcast from Cogworks Media, hosted by Andrew.▶ Subscribe for teaching that takes Scripture seriously🔗 More shows and ways to give: cogworksmedia.orgCogworks Media is a 501(c)(3) public charity — gifts are tax-deductible.Music: The Epic Hero by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/

What you get out of Revelation depends on which school of interpretation you follow, and once you buy into one, it colors every symbol you read. In Part 2, Andrew lays out the four recognized schools and then turns to sequencing: where the millennium, the tribulation, and the rapture fall.The idealist school. Revelation as allegory, a moral story about persecution and God's final victory, much like Aesop's fables. Andrew reads Revelation 20:1–6 and asks whether the thousand years is real or symbolic. He also notes that the final battle with Gog and Magog comes after the millennium, not at Armageddon.The historicist school. Revelation as a symbolic preview of church history. From Martin Luther placing the Reformation in its pages to missionaries in 1930s Germany who were sure Hitler was the beast, every generation finds itself in the book, and every generation has been wrong so far.The preterist school. Everything, or nearly everything, in Revelation has already happened. Its strongest argument is Revelation 1:1, "the things that must soon take place," and Nero is its usual Antichrist.The futurist school. Chapter 1 is the prologue, chapters 2–3 are messages to seven churches that still apply today, chapters 4–21 are still to come, and chapter 22 is the epilogue.The millennium. Premillennial, postmillennial, and amillennial views, and why a plain reading of Revelation 20 points to Christ returning bodily to reign on the earth.The tribulation. The idea goes back to Daniel 9 and the seventy sevens: a 490-year clock that pauses when the Anointed One is cut off after 483 years. Paul's words in Romans 11 about the full number of the Gentiles fit with that pause. The final seven years restart the clock, and the worst of it comes in the last three and a half.The rapture. It isn't in Revelation at all. Andrew covers 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17, why the Thessalonians feared they'd been left behind, and the pre-, mid-, and post-tribulation positions.The point isn't to win the sequencing argument. Christ is coming again, and our faith and trust belong in Him.Part 2 of a four-episode series on Revelation.—The Bible in 3D is a Christ-centered Bible teaching podcast from Cogworks Media, hosted by Andrew.▶ Subscribe for teaching that takes Scripture seriously🔗 More shows and ways to give: cogworksmedia.orgCogworks Media is a 501(c)(3) public charity — gifts are tax-deductible.Music: The Epic Hero by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/

There is no shortage of material on Revelation, and most of it offers to tell you the timing, the world players, and the geopolitics of the end. It's often entertaining and it always leaves us unsatisfied — Jesus himself said no one knows the timing of his return. So this four-part series takes a different approach: Revelation as great literature, and the literary challenges of studying it.Foreword and Introduction. Revelation means to unveil or disclose; the Greek behind it gives us "apocalypse," which we have since narrowed to mean the end of the world. John received the vision on Patmos around AD 96, exiled under Domitian, ninety miles from the coast of what is now Turkey — a date confirmed by Irenaeus, a second-generation disciple of John himself. Sixty-three years earlier, John had leaned against Jesus at the Last Supper. Now, an old man, he falls down as though dead. Chapter 1:19 sets the structure for everything that follows: the things you have seen, the things that are, and the things that are to take place after this. Chapters 2–3 are the things that are — Christ's messages to seven churches, six of them planted out from Ephesus. Chapters 4–22 are the things to come, opening with the throne room and the scroll that only the Lion of Judah, the Lamb who was slain, is worthy to open.Part 1 — The medium of communication. Scripture uses prose, poetry, types, and symbols. John uses symbols, and almost everything in Revelation is one. The other book that works this way is Daniel — Nebuchadnezzar's dreams, the four beasts — which is why the Old Testament is the best available key. When the sea appears, it stands for the Gentile nations; when the land appears, it points to Israel. That is how the two beasts of chapter 13 come into focus.Part 2 — Secondary gain. Borrowed from medicine, "secondary gain" names the hidden advantages a person gets from a condition. Scholars and churchmen carry their own, consciously or not, and nowhere do they show more than in Revelation. Andrew works through chapter 12 — the woman clothed with the sun, the dragon, the male child — and shows how Joseph's dream in Genesis identifies the woman as Israel, and how traditions committed to the view that God is finished with the Jews must read her as something else. The same pressure appears again over the 144,000 and the great multitude in chapter 7.The takeaway for the reader: know what biases you, and your church, bring to the table, because they will determine what you get out of this book.And one command to carry regardless of where you land on any of it: do not take the mark of the beast, and do not worship the beast.Next episode: the schools of interpretation.—The Bible in 3D is a Christ-centered Bible teaching podcast from Cogworks Media, hosted by Andrew.🔗 More shows and ways to give: cogworksmedia.orgCogworks Media is a 501(c)(3) public charity — gifts are tax-deductible.Music: The Epic Hero by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoonAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Music promoted by https://www.chosic.com/free-music/all/

Apocrypha Deuterocanonical booksThe Apocrypha originated as highly esteemed books that weren’t Scripture. There were 12 (or 15, depending on how they are divided): Tobit, Judith, Wisdom (of Solomon), Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, 1 Maccabees, and 2 MaccabeesSeptuagint and were formally affirmed as canonical by the Council of Trent in 1546. Protestant traditions generally exclude them from the biblical canon, viewing them as useful for edification but not divinely authoritative.5-Reasons to Reject the Apocrypha Books1. Lack of Hebrew Originals and Jewish Canon: The reformers, adhering to the principle of sola scriptura (Scripture alone), argued that the Old Testament canon should be based on the Hebrew scriptures used by Jesus and the Jewish people. Most Deuterocanonical books were written in Greek, not Hebrew, and were not part of the Jewish canon (the Masoretic Text) that was affirmed by Jewish scholars after the time of Christ.2. Doctrinal Concerns: Certain teachings in these books conflicted with key Reformation doctrines. For example, 2 Maccabees 12:46, which supports praying for the dead, was used to justify the Catholic doctrine of purgatory—a concept rejected by Protestants who believe salvation and forgiveness of sins are achieved solely through faith in Christ during one's lifetime.2 Macc 15:13–14 speaks of the dead praying for the living…And Oni′ as spoke, saying, “This is a man who loves the brethren and prays much for the people and the holy city, Jeremiah, the prophet of God.”…Tobit 12:9 and Sirach 3:3 speak of good works atoning for evil deedsFor almsgiving delivers from death, and it will purge away every sin. Those who perform deeds of charity[a] and of righteousness will have fullness of life; Whoever honours his father atones for sins,2 Macc 12:40–45 speaks of purgatory…and they turned to prayer, beseeching that the sin which had been committed might be wholly blotted out…3. Historical and Textual Criticism: Reformers like Martin Luther and scholars such as Jerome expressed doubts about the authenticity and authority ofthese texts. While Jerome included them in the Latin Vulgate, he noted they were not part of the Hebrew canon and were suitable for edification but not for establishing doctrine.As a result, the reformers relegated these books to a separate section, often titled "Apocrypha," stating they were useful for reading and instruction in life but not for establishing Christian doctrine.

The book of Jeremiah exists in two primary versions: the Masoretic Text, the standard Hebrew text behind our Old Testament, and the Septuagint, an ancient Greek translation made from a different Hebrew source. They differ significantly in length and arrangement — and the Dead Sea Scrolls contain both. Andrew walks through the problem and offers a straightforward explanation.Length. The Septuagint version runs roughly an eighth shorter than the Masoretic Text — about 2,700 fewer words. Nothing in the shorter version conflicts with the longer one, and nothing in the additional material touches doctrine.Arrangement. Both versions begin and end the same way, but the middle differs. The oracles against the nations sit at the end of the book in the Masoretic Text (chapters 46–51); in the Septuagint they appear after chapter 25, and in a different sequence.Authority. Fragments from Cave 4 at Qumran confirm that shorter Hebrew texts corresponding to the Septuagint circulated alongside the longer tradition, and the community there treated both as authoritative. Neither is the sole "original" — each reflects a distinct stage in the book's transmission.Andrew's explanation. Jeremiah served forty years: the first half speaking, the second half dictating to his scribe Baruch as Judah moved through the final phase of the covenant curses — Carchemish, three deportations, the fall of Jerusalem, and the blinding of Zedekiah. When Jeremiah and Baruch were carried off to Egypt, the work almost certainly had to be dictated again from the beginning. That second telling would naturally come out shorter and differently arranged. Same prophet, same word, two editions.Along the way: the Great Isaiah Scroll and what it proved about the reliability of the Hebrew text, why the Synoptic Gospels offer a useful parallel, and the short chapter God addressed to Baruch personally — you sought great things for yourself; do not. I will give you your life.Part of the Hot Topics series on The Bible in 3D. This is Part 2 of three on Bible Difficulties. Next: the Apocrypha.—The Bible in 3D is a Christ-centered Bible teaching podcast from Cogworks Media, hosted by Andrew.🔗 More shows and ways to give: cogworksmedia.orgCogworks Media is a 501(c)(3) public charity — gifts are tax-deductible.